Superheroes Sequel 101: Issue 1 Battle Strategy

Hey Tappers….Safi asked if he could help out with some Superheroes posts and suggested that maybe he could do a Battle Strategy post. I thought it was a great idea…so here’s Safi’s take on battle strategy for Issue 1.. Enjoy!

Hey Battle Strategists!

In a follow-up to “Superheroes Sequel 101: Issue 1 Battles” I’m going to delve into some basic strategy of these battles. In order to understand the strategy, it’s important you know the basics of battles in general. So be sure to read that first post before reading this. I’ll wait until you’re done reading…

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Still waiting

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Done reading that post? Good, now that you the basics of battling, we’re going to cover basic strategy so you know how to win battles (both felon and social battles) and how to maximize knuckles (felon battles only). There will be a few different scenarios I have included to illustrate things as well.

We’ll break down this post into three parts: Beginner, Intermediate, and Advance.

BEGINNER

First thing, always remember which fighter type has an advantage over another fighter type:

Brawn has an advantage over Brains

Brain has an advantage over Tech

Tech has an advantage over Brawn

What this advantage means is that the character will do more damage to the weaker character (2 hearts in 1 shot). In return the character with the weaker defense will lose 2 hearts with 1 shot.

Secondly, when you’re selecting your team to go into a felon battle or social battle, take a look at the top of the battle box for the Fighter Roster. You’ll fight the characters in the order in which they appear at the top from left to right. As well, the first character you select will be the one that leads the battle for your team.

So in the scenario above, your team will face a Tech fighter Meg Ahertz first, a Brawn fighter Testost-Irene second, and finish with another Brawn fighter Gluteus third. Also, in the scenario above, you’ve chosen a Brain fighter in Dr. Colossus to lead the battle for your team.

As mentioned in that basic post, because you’re facing off against a Tech first, Brawn second, and Brawn third; your ideal team to counter is a Brain first, Tech second, and Tech third. Why?

Your Brain will have an advantage over their Tech.

Your Tech will have an advantage over their Brawn.

Your Tech will have an advantage over their Brawn.

The order is pretty important and can win you a lot of battles simply by matching up your roster so you always have an advantage over your opponents roster.

Now let’s get into some mathematics. We know that there are 3 options for what fighter type the first opponent can be (either Brawn, Brain, or Tech). Likewise, there are 3 options for what the second opponent can be. And finally, there are also the same 3 options for what the third opponent can be. Taking 3 x 3 x 3, we get 27 different fighter type permutations we might face over the course of the event.

So for those who are really overwhelmed by how to choose team members, below is a table showing all 27 permutations of Fighter Rosters you may encounter, along with the fighter types for the ideal team you should put together to beat them (in a lot of cases).

Again, for beginners, if you follow the table above, without worrying about switching players or healing them, you’ll win a lot of your felon battles and social battles. To get that win percentage even higher or perfect, keep reading.

INTERMEDIATE

After you’ve seen the fighter types of the opposing roster, another thing to look at is their life line (number of hearts). If you’ve chosen the correct fighter type, even if you have lower life line, you stand a good chance of winning, as you get to attack first and your advantage will do more damage to their character.

This is because it is important to understand the order of who gets to attack when.

You get to attack first at the start of every battle.

Once you’ve attacked, if you didn’t kill the opponent’s character, the opponent gets a turn to counter attack you.

After your opponent counter attacks, it’s again your turn to attack.

If you kill an opponent’s character on your attack, when the opponent’s new character appears, you again get to attack first.

If your character gets killed by your opponent on their counter attack turn, your new character gets to attack first.

If it’s your turn and you use Science Water, you still get to attack.

If it’s your turn and you switch characters, you forfeit your attack, and its your opponents turn to counter attack.

So in the early stages for beginners with the bare minimum characters, you may face off against an opponent with only one heart. If that is the case, it doesn’t matter which fighter type you choose as any fighter type will kill a one heart character.

So if the opponents roster is made up of a 1 heart Tech, 1 heart Brawn, and 2 heart Brain, the table in the Beginner section above says your roster should be made up of a Brain, then Tech, then Brawn. But knowing what we just covered about order of attacks, you could win this battle with just a 1 heart Brawn leading alone. This is explained below:

The battle starts with your 1 heart Brawn (note: all your characters should start with at least 2 hearts, but for sake of example I’ll use 1 heart) taking on their 1 heart Tech. You get first move.

First move: 1 heart Brawn at a disadvantage would still deal 1 damage to 1 heart Tech.

In the example above, you just won without a single hit against you. Those who stopped reading at the Beginner part would have won too. But they would have been dealt at least 1 heart damage.

Let’s illustrate the importance of order in a scenario:

In this scenario, we’re taking on a 2 heart Brawn, 3 heart Brawn, and a 2 heart Tech. This is a beginner account and only has access to the four characters re-introduced for all new players who were not part of Superheroes 1.

If you look at the Beginner table, the ideal team to defeat a Brawn/Brawn/Tech roster is a team made up of Tech/Tech/Brain. All new players only have one Tech character, so we’ve gone Tech/Brain and left the third spot empty. [Note I left the third spot empty because I was sure I can win with just the two; but if you’re not sure, just put any character in the third spot to possibly help increase your chances of winning]

Because we killed our opponent’s character, it will remain our turn to attack when their second character comes.

We again have Tech advantage over Brawn, and inflict 2 damage to their 3 heart Brawn.

Their 3 heart Brawn will counter attack with 1 damage, as Brawn is at a disadvantage to our Tech.

Our Clownface then delivers another 2 damage attack, which is enough to kill their 3 heart Brawn.

With their 3 heart Brawn killed, their last 2 heart Tech comes in. Since we just killed their character, it will again be our turn.

Here we are at the critical junction and have two options: we can attack with Clownface or we can switch to Fallout Boy.

Given that we only have 4 characters and I’ll be back in an hour for my next attack, we’re going to switch to Fallout Boy. This gives us the advantage of Brain over Tech, but it sacrifices our turn. Their 2 heart Tech counter attacks and deals one damage.

Now Fallout Boy can use the Brain over Tech advantage and deal the 2 damage fatal blow.

In this scenario, both characters only lost one health and will heal in one hour. However, if we wouldn’t be online in an hour, attacking rather than switching might have been a better option at the critical junction.

If we had attacked instead of switched at the critical junction (pictured above again), a Tech versus Tech neutral matchup would only deal 1 damage, and Clownface would have been killed on the counter attack. That would bring in Fallout Boy who would deal the winning blow for our team.

In this outcome, Clownface would need 2 hours to recover his 2 hearts, but Fallout Boy would be in full health along with the two characters we didn’t use.

While most regularly active players can wait for the healing time to elapse, there are alternatives to waiting. Here is a list of all the ways you can heal your characters:

One heart will heal for every hour elapsed between battles.

A Band Aid will heal one heart, and can only be used between battles.

A Science Water will heal two hearts, and can only be used during battles.

Best time to upgrade your character using gems is between battles, as the upgrade will automatically heal your character and give them their extra heart (so you essentially heal without consuming Science Water or Band Aids and can use the character again).

In the previous illustrated scenario, we were taking on weak opponents with a weak team. This gave us the option to both attack or switch at the critical junction. However, sometimes we have to face strong opponents with a weak team; where switching will actually hinder your chances of winning.

Knowing that you will get attacked if you switch characters, it can be a strategic advantage to leave a weaker player with just one heart remaining in to absorb the hit and die rather than switching them out for another player and having them lose a heart right away.

Let’s go through a scenario together to illustrate this.

Our opponent’s team includes a 4 heart Brawn, a 4 heart Brain, and a 4 heart Tech. Our team as you can see only has 2 heart characters. But we know that given the right advantage, our players can do double damage. As the table in the Beginner section shows, best counter to a Brawn/Brain/Tech roster is Tech/Brawn/Brain.

So that’s what we do, we have our 2 heart Tech (Fruit-Bat-Man), 2 heart Brawn (Radioactive Man), and 2 heart Brain (Fallout Boy). We know the Tech has advantage over Brawn and will immediately do 2 damage and only take 1 in return on the counter attack.

So now on our subsequent attack, Fruit-Bat-Man again deals 2 damage and kills their 4 heart Tech guy.

Having killed their 4 heart Tech guy, we now face their 4 heart Brain guy. But it’s still our turn. If we were to switch right now, we would sacrifice our attacking turn and be at a significant disadvantage fighting a 4 heart Brain with just a 1 heart Brawn, as Radioactive Man would immediately lose one health on the counter attack. So we’ll strategically keep Fruit-Bat-Man in and attack. The counter attack will kill Fruit-Bat-Man.

We can now bring in our 2 heart Brawn who has advantage over their 4 heart Brain (who already lost a heart to Fruit-Bat-Man).

We know Brawn has advantage over Brain, so Radioactive Man deals 2 damage and takes 1 in the counter attack. On the subsequent attack, Radioactive Man kills their 4 heart Brain.

Again, having killed their 4 heart Brain guy, we now face their 4 heart Tech gal. But it’s still our turn. If we were to switch right now, we would sacrifice our attacking turn and be at a significant disadvantage fighting a 4 heart Tech with just a 1 heart Brain, as Fallout Boy would immediately lose a heart on the counter attack. So we’ll strategically keep Radioactive Man in and attack. The counter attack will kill Radioactive Man.

With Radioactive Man dead, Fallout Boy comes in and has Brain’s advantage over their Tech gal. His attack deals 2 damage and he takes one hit in the counter attack.

With one heart left each, Fallout Boy launches the final attack. With 4 hours until the next set of Fighter Rosters is ready, we have ample time for healing. Fruit-Bat-Man and Radioactive will require 2 hours for healing while Fallout Boy will require just 1 hour. If I still have felon battles waiting to be fought, I can come back in two hours and use these three characters again without spending a Donut, Band Aid or Science Water.

When it comes to upgrading characters, various strategies will work. You need to use the gems (which you get from winning battles) to upgrade characters.

The best strategy in my opinion for upgrading is to pick one Brawn, one Brain, and one Tech, and level them each up to level 3, then level 4, and finally level 5. The reason for this is explained in the Advance section.

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Using the Beginner and Intermediate strategies together, you should be undefeated in felon and social battles. However, are you more interested in wins or in event currency? Continue reading Advance strategy to maximize your event currency. You’ll also want to refrain from upgrading all your characters to help with the Advance strategy.

ADVANCED

For those who either have characters from last year or have purchased Premium characters this year, there is a way to maximize event currency at the price of your win-loss record.

This is just based on the flaw in the payout system of battling Felons in your town.

– If you win, you get 350 knuckles.

– If you lose, you get 55 knuckles, along with another opportunity to attack and get the 350 knuckles.

Therefore, to really progress in the prize track, it is best to lose as many times as you can. This will give you 55 knuckles each time you lose. And then eventually complete the battle and get another 350 knuckles.

Personal analogy:

In my case, I have one Brawn, one Brain, and one Tech character at 5 hearts each. All my other characters I have kept at 2 hearts each. As a result of my three 5 heart characters, my felon battles are always against rosters made of three 5 heart characters.

But rather than win these battles right away on my first attempt (which I could easily do using the Beginner and Intermediate strategies above); I lose as many times as I can, which happens to be 12 losses per battle, before winning the battle on my 13thattempt. The bonus remains the same when I take out 15 hearts in 1 attempt versus the sum of bonuses over 13 attempts.

Those who are undefeated, if you win the three felon battles earning 350 knuckles, you’re getting 1,050 knuckles for those three battles. Using this method of losing 12 times at 55 knuckles and winning 350 knuckles on the 13th attempt, over the same three felon battles I’m earning 3,030 knuckles (288% of the original 1,050).

Now depending on how many characters you have, and what fighter types you need in order to lose your battle, you may not be able to do a full 13 attempts in the same 4 hours. But still, this method will get you much further ahead in the prize track.

I was initially 32-0 combined in felon and social battles, before I picked up on this method yesterday. Under 72 hours into the event, I could be 51-0 with under 25,000 knuckles. But instead I’m 51-44 with over 27,000 knuckles (thanks to an extra 2,420 knuckles from 44 loses in felon battle over the past 24 hours).

My losses are really starting to pick up as I now have the method down. I anticipate I should hopefully be able to incur 80 losses a day with the current character set I have (I don’t have all the premium characters or any of the premium items).

Unlocking all the prizes in this act is practically inevitable. So 80 losses a day comes out to nearly an extra bonut every other day compared to those who win every battle.

Again, this only works in Felon Battles, not in Social Battles. While you can still do this with all your characters upgraded to 5 hearts, it’s a lot easier to lose if you have 2 or 3 heart characters.

CONCLUSION

And that my friends…I hope…completes the explanation on Superheroes 2 Battle Strategy! (I should have warned you it was long…)

With this much information, it’s a lot to take in in one sitting. I recommend re-reading this post a couple times to get the most out of it.

What are your thoughts on the battle strategies? How’s your record so far? Were you quick to figure it out, or still working through it? Which, if any, of the aforementioned strategies were helpful or will you use? Sound off in the comments below, you know we love hearing from you!

Looking for how to use gems to upgrade felons for social battle? I have a couple felons who have only 4 hearts, and game isn’t letting me upgrade them to 5 hearts. Some came with 5 hearts already.. what’s the trick, or do I have a glitch?

Felons come with fixed hearts. You start with two 4-heart felons, but as you make your way along the Social Battle prize track, you’ll unlock four more felons. However, the six felons are fixed and have three 4-heart felons and three 5-heart felons. There is no way to upgrade the 4-heart felons.

Hi there. I just discovered your advanced strategy. I have a lot of characters that I have upgraded to 4 or 5 hearts already. Would a simple (or semi-advanced) strategy for me to Maximize currency be for me to just lose as much as possible until the game forces me to win? In other words, just pick as many disadvantaged fights until felons are too weak to fight anyone.

Easiest way to do it is to always make sure you send only one character at a time to fight. This will increase the number of times you lose compared to sending three characters to fight at once.

Best way is to take it a step further and make sure the one character you send in to fight alone is at a disadvantage in the battle (i.e. send Brain to get whooped by Brawn, send Tech to get whooped by Brain, and send Brawn to get whooped by Tech). This will maximize the number of times you lose.

OR… send two fighters at a time, but instead of attacking on your turn, just switch out your fighters every time. The opponent will counter-attack and do damage. You will be forced to attack once when your first fighter dies, but you will only deal one heart of damage for each battle.

Now, if only I had discovered this whole “lose-to-win” strategy BEFORE the last day of the event! I’m sure I wouldn’t have upgraded all my fighters to 5 hearts.

Anyone else have an issue where it makes you lose a battle even if you’ve won it? Ruined my perfect streak, since I wasn’t doing the whole lose battles strategy (and still got king coal in plenty of time). Lame bug.

I’ve noticed it happens sometimes when double-tapping the attack to skip past the animations. If doing this for the last felon star, sometimes all of the characters disappear, but the attack button remains; it seems clicking that button will note you’ve lost, probably because there are no heroes on the screen.

It happened to me a few times before I stopped double-tapping that last attack, and it hasn’t happened since. I didn’t care about the record, but it irked me that I lost out the rewards; a little moot since I got everything with time to spare, but annoying nonetheless.

I have a question regarding battles…..why is it that blue and red lines run through our names and yet you battle a neighbour and win and nothing changes? I’m curious as to how the numbers are calculated? I’ve won all battles, I’ve battled with top neighbours and won and yet they’re standings are still ahead of mine?

This has happened a few times and I actually got on here just now to see if it was a known issue. Would be alright (if you read the advanced strategy) but the game still counts it as if you have beaten the felons and they disappear.

I just thought of another good reason for using my approach of using fighters strategically to weaken the opponents so that you can get your win without costing your fighter any hearts, and then clearing the decks as much as possible by taking as many of those no-cost wins as possible….

Unlike with the social battles, it’s not the battles themselves that set/reset the clock in your town – it’s simply releasing the next batch of gangs that resets the clock. So you always want to make sure to have room for them, even if/when you might not have the time to actually fight battles to make room for them.

If you’re always keeping your pipeline full until it’s time to release the next batch, then you’re forced to fight and win at least three battles to make the room. By my strategy, I usually have plenty of room to release the next group as soon as the alleyway is “ripe.”

Because of your tips about losing, I’m just a few hundred brass knuckles away from earning Old King Cole, and I’ll have seven+ days to earn bonuts. Right now, I’m at 78 wins and 116 losses. That means, over the past few days, I’ve earned 6380 more brass knuckles than I would’ve by winning alone. This is awesome!

I’ve bought donuts in the past, but I’ve switched to playing purely freemium every since the monorail event. So, every bonut round is precious. A million thanks, Safi!

As a predominantly freemium player only myself, I know how precious donuts are. So always looking for ways to get bonuts. With over 300 losses now, I’m just about halfway towards my second round of bonuts.

Don’t know if I’m being stupid but my fighters don’t switch after each turn. It doesn’t matter what order I put them in because it just stays on the first fighter I’ve selected. Am I being stupid here?

Great strategy, Safi! I wish I had read your post earlier and hadn’t upgrade my heros evenly. Should have kept as many of them at two hearts as possible. After playing for a while, I realized that having a perfect win is too easy. We just have to put our fighters in the right order. We could wipe out 12 felon hearts in one battle and earn only 350 knuckles/battle.

Now with this strategy, I’m stretching those felon hearts out over as many battles as possible. I only pick ONE hero with the lower advantage for each battle. Let them die, heal, then lose again. Eventually, I’ll wipe out all felons and win, but not before “earning” multiple 50-knuckle losses.

Okay, Safi — either I’ve improved upon your advanced strategy, or I’m just playing it the way you would be if you had the same number/level of fighters as I did.

What I’m doing is using my losses to weaken gangs down to the point that I can get all of my wins without having to use up a character to do it. (In other words, I keep picking away at them until they have only one or two hearts left on one felon.) Then, when I’m starting a fresh “round” (when my fighters have rested for 4 hours and are good to go), I go and win as many matches as I can without losing any hearts (i.e., the matches don’t put any of my fighters into resting mode), which is always at least 3, but can be more. Then, I send all of my fighters off to lose, but, again, strategically in such a way as it can help me get each gang down to one felon with only one or two hearts left. Sometimes, to do this, I actually have to start with one or more losses (if there are no gangs down to one felon with only one or two hearts) and then go for the wins.

It takes a bit of thought to make sure I’m using the right fighters for each particular match-up, keeping in mind the other outstanding opponents they have and such. But I think it’s helping me to maximize my returns. (I’m nowhere near where you are in the prize track, though, probably because I started losing much later than you did and also because I think you have more fighters than I do (plus, you’re fighting gangs at a level that’s one heart higher than I am, because you have 5-heart fighters and I don’t).

Oh, yeah…I forgot that you can send characters to lose every 2 hours…I can only lose every 4 hours. (Well, wait…I do have a couple of 2 heart fighters now…I could lose with them every 2 hours, but I find it more effective to use them to lose by bringing an opponent down to 1 or 2 hearts, so I can win against them without using up a fighter…wonder if I can do both, though?? I’ll have to think about that… OTOH, I don’t really have the time to play every two hours, now that I’m back to work for the week….)

Actually, it’s your sheer number of battles compared to mine. I have a 63-64 record, so my total number of battles is only 127. Of course, some of that is due to my not losing for the first few days, but I think a lot of it is also your two-hour schedule, compared to my four-hour schedule.

The advance strategy can work for you, but to a much smaller degree right now. How it would work for you would be that once in the maintenance phase, every four hours, you’d win three battles for the normal 1,050 knuckles (3 x 350). After that, if you have any healthy characters amongst those four, you would send them one at a time to die in battle alone for 55 extra knuckles. Because they are 4 hearts, they require 4 hours to heal and will be fully healed when you come back four hours later. As you unlock Cyborg Snake, Old King Coal, and Act 2/3 characters, you’ll just have extra characters to kill off for extra knuckles.